Winter break, 2009, I went for it. I paid out vast amounts of money to tour companies and airlines and filled out papers for visas and passports. I made arrangements for shots  and malaria pills. I bought electric adaptors. Cameras with extra batteries. Pants that zip off into shorts. First aid, raincoats, ‘gators,’ Tamiflu just in case… It is a BIG job packing for this trip. Especially because I am accustomed to thinking, ‘well if I don’t pack it, I’ll buy it there.’ There is no ‘buy it there.’ It’s freaking Africa. There is no Target.  No CVS. There is (at best) a counter at a small airport that sells eighty year old Alka-Seltzer and santitary napkins  the size of a twin bed.

I told my son the arrangements were final. I told him all the details and he listened to me much in the same way he usually does. Which is to say, not at all. I know this because about a week before the trip he asked,
“When did you say we’re leaving?”
“The day you get out of school.”
“And when do we get back?”
“The day before school starts.”

He turned to me, furious.   “So, I get NO vacation.”

Thirty thousand dollars. Fourteen days. Business class tickets. Lions. Leopards. Hot air balloons. Tented camps.  And he doesn’t see it as a vacation.  One would think this might make me a tad upset  but folks, this is not my first rodeo.

“No,” I responded. “You get no vacation at all.”

He avoided all the preparations. He showed no interest whatsoever in the packing of the supplies. He was in complete denial.  When friends would try and engage him, (“Wow! I heard you’re going to Africa!”) he’d turn and stare bleeding holes through my head,  literally willing me to stop the senseless cruelty of all this.  ”Yes,” he’d say very slowly as though still trying to believe it himself.  ”Yes we are.”  A long pause, still unblinking.  ”And we just can’t wait.”

As the departure date got closer and closer, and he could no longer tune out the growing stacks of khaki clothing, he became hysterical at the concept that I was going to make him go through with this.

I… (and this is how I eventually won the war)… totally ignored him. For once, I took a page out of my parents book and just made up my mind that he had no say in anything.  I turned and floated out of the room as he screamed… “Where are we staying? Mom? Mom? Please answer me.  They have internet there, right?”

Well, no.  Where we were going, they politely suggest you might want to bring your own toilet paper…

TO BE CONTINUED…

I furnished it with things that were comfortable and fun. I had a kid. Got a couple dogs. Hired a housekeeper. Things went well for several years. Everybody got along.

Now it seems, I’m going to have to leave.  There’s no room for me here anymore. Certainly not in the den where my voice is just an unwanted interruption to my son’s video  games and homework – (in that order).    Not in the kitchen which is maintained by the housekeeper and jealously guarded by the dogs who, by the way,  have recently had a  change of heart and now like the housekeeper MUCH better than they like me.  (Note to self: tell the housekeeper I will feed the dogs from now on. )

The closet space has all been used up by toys and basketball shoes and leashes. The backyard contains trampolines, chewy toys, footballs, bicycles, and tents. At times I try to  sleep in the area that used to be my room, but this depends on whether or not the dogs need the bed.  The living room is large, but at the present time is occupied by all the rugs from the rest of the  house that we’ve had to roll up so nobody (and you know who you are)  chews them.

My son will pull out his own fingernails rather than throw away an old PC or X-Box magazine. He has every video game ever developed and every stupid plastic party favor ever bestowed on him. He has twenty seven hundred colored pencils and a color printer.  Clothes that fit him, clothes that don’t fit him and clothes that will fit him. Boxes of old schoolwork.  Vitamins, Uggs, air rifles, board games.  Portable DVD players, Guitar Hero guitars and a 75 Sunkist orange-soda can pyramid.   I have a tube of mascara and the car key.

It’s not the disorganization so much as the fact that it’s not my house anymore.  When I hired our housekeeper, I decided to empower her. Let her know that she was to do what she thought was best. So she does. This, for some reason includes a need to write on everything I own. Like we couldn’t possibly remember that in the plastic pitcher in the refrigerator, we keep water. No. She’s decided to write the word “WATER” on it in huge letters. And then, I guess for those who can’t read, draw little black drops of water around the word “water.”

In the box in the cabinet where we keep old batteries for recycling, the word “Badereez” has appeared… Once again, accompanied by some kind of drawing that appears to be…. lightning bolts?? I don’t know. I think it’s lightning bolts. In my opinion, not really the best icon for dead ‘badereez,” but whatever.

She has also decided that my house is safer than hers (and yes, this is true), so she hides packages of money and papers everywhere. In my bread drawer there are birth certificates. Copies of green cards in the linen closet. Photographs are tucked away lovingly in what appears to be random CD cases. You thought you’d play some Lyle Lovett? Not so fast. This case contains little Jorge’s first day of school. When I try to throw out old rugs or appliances, she gasps, alarmed that something so precious might be discarded and says, “No, no. I will take.” Then she takes it… and  puts it in my garage.  The garage (along with everything I’ve ever tried to throw out) is also where we store her suitcases and her son’s skateboards. And some books that my girlfriend doesn’t have room for. And the gardeners tools. And someone’s couch. I can’t remember who.

“Pizza”
“No”
and, “I forgot.”

So I’m working at the school bookstore yesterday and the mother of one of his friends approaches me and puts her hand on my shoulder. “I just have to congratulate you on your son,” she says. “He is just charming.”

“Oh my God,” I think to myself. “This is just brutal sarcasm. What the hell has he done now?” And yet, she continues, smiling. “What is your secret? ” She asks. I stare at her paralyzed. Does she know who she’s talking to? Is she on acid? Does she need money?

“We had the most wonderful conversation last week,” she continues (probably in a polite way to cover up the fact that I am just standing there squinting at her.) “He just loves the middle school and how ’bout that new girlfriend?”

I’m lost. Now what? I can’t let this woman know that I have NO IDEA WHAT SHE’S TALKING ABOUT. I can’t let her know that while thrilled with the notion that my son could have an actual conversation, let alone look up long enough to identify a girl and separate her from the pack, I am completely confused by what she is saying. Another woman strolls over. “Are you telling her about what Danny did at the field trip?” she asks the first mother. Then she turns to me. “He gave his lunch to a crying kid who forgot his.”

Okay. This isn’t funny anymore. He noticed something? He gave away his lunch? Who am I living with? Well I can tell you. I’m living with non-communicative primordial ooze. So why is it that when my little neanderthal is out in the world, he’s Ralph Freaking Lauren?

The answer is obvious. It’s to spite me. It’s to keep me off balance. It’s to make me into a raving maniac. (Like I needed any help with that.) Have you seen the classic movie “Gaslight?” Well, this is his version of that. This is how he begins his control of my life. This is how he makes me believe that he is sane and I am not. And dammit if it’s not working.

And then the report card comes. “Danny is always happy.”

Oh COME ON.

“I am so impressed with Danny. He has a natural maturity and willingness to try just about anything.”

This is just cruel.

“Danny is a fervent lab partner who seems to really enjoy the discovery aspect of this course.”

No. Danny is a sullen, angry teenager who despises anything that requires him to rise from the couch and regrets ever being born. What is actually happening here?

Okay. There are a few times that he is attentive and willing to help out. But this is always in trade for a ride to a distant friends house or the purchase of an extremely murderous X-Box game. So of course, the question here is, why is he so completely lovely at school and when visiting friends, but at home I get the exasperating back-breaking hypochondriac whose life I ruin on a daily basis? Honest -to-God I have sat here for the last thirty-five minutes trying to figure out the answer. Finally I decided, screw it. I went into the den, paused the television and read him this entry. “What is it?” I asked. “Why are you like this?”

He turned to me, thoughtfully. I could see in his eyes that he was interested and trying to find the right words to help me. “This is it,” I thought. “I can see the beautiful human being that all those other mothers were telling me about.” He opens his mouth…

“Dunno.”

Five words.

“I sure wish I’d had half your ability at math when I was in school.”
“Can you help me organize the closet? You’re so much better than I am at figuring out where things go.”
“How do you think we should do this? I can’t decide.”

The end result is that my kid thinks I’m a bumbling moron. When I go to turn on the T.V., he holds his hand out and says, “Oh my God. Give me the remote.” As we walk out the door he asks, “did you at least remember your keys?”

This can’t possibly be what the psychologists had in mind.

Not only that, he’s very sure that since he’s the only capable one in the house that he has a say in everything that happens around here. For example, a simple Saturday morning will sound like this:

Me:” Okay sweetheart, we need to go run some errands.”
Him: “No.

Obviously I’ve lost control when I’m required to come up with a valid reason for him to leave his computer. Whatever happened to “Get in the goddamn car?” When I was a kid in Michigan, and my parents told me to get in the car, it didn’t matter where they were going, I just got in the car. I got in the car once and ended up in California. I had no idea. New house, new school, no questions. Because my parents weren’t interested in my input AT ALL. If someone had told my father to let me have a little authority, he would have taken a sip of his J&B and uttered his famous phrase. “The door swings both ways.” I remember being horrified. If I didn’t like his rules, I could leave. I tried that little gem out on my son. He replied, “Not only that, the window in the bathroom won’t close.”

And I’m beginning to think it’s too late for me to regain our former master/slave relationship. I suppose it’s my fault for listening to the “experts” who decided that children should have power. Where are these geniuses now that the kid is 5′11″ and ripped? Surely there must be a follow-up book out there explaining the procedure for taking down a teenager who thinks he has it all figured out. I’m thinking Fruity Pebbles, netting and bungie cords.

Me: “Tomorrow after school, we need to get your hair cut.”
Him: “No.”

Seriously though, he’s not rude. And eventually he will become a strong man with solid well thought out opinions. It’s just that right now it’s hard to believe that someone who draws monsters on his arms with a Sharpie pen can be so freaking sure of himself. And you know, maybe that’s what’s so irritating. I think I might be mad at him because I’ve NEVER felt that sure of anything. Never.

So, let’s review. I now resent my son for being exactly what I tried to make him. Someone more confident than I am.

Damn it to HELL.

Rae

My son sits at his computer and next to him is a phone on ’speaker,’ which is running a conference call between him and all his friends playing a particular computer game. It took me a while to figure out what was going on but eventually I realized that when I talk in my house, it’s being broadcast through his phone to no less than five other people’s homes, all of whom have their kids on speaker phone. So in essence, when I stand in the kitchen yelling, “Get your hideous dog out of here, he’s farting into the dishwasher,” that information is being simultaneously transmitted out to families across the city.

But to be fair, their daily household events are also being sent to us. I now realize that if I pay a little attention, I can hear all kinds of intimate things coming from other people’s homes. I know that Sebastian’s mother has a raging yeast infection which is why she has refused to have sex for the last three weeks. I know Zachary’s family is selling their vacation home because his dad lost his job, which according to Zachary’s mom is “Exactly what happens when you pour a half a bottle of scotch into your morning Starbucks you freaking LOSER” and it turns out that Eric’s mom found a very revealing photo of Matthew McConaughey in Eric’s dad’s sock drawer.

When you think about it, all this socializing is kind of good for an only child with a working mom. It’s like he always has friends over. At night, I come home to the sound of kids yelling and talking and phones ringing and texts dinging. It’s warm and fun and a good time is being had by all. “Hi everyone! I’m home.” No response. “I’m home from work you guys!” Nothing. So much communication and yet, no one has any desire to talk to me. “I suppose you’re all desperate to know what kind of day I had.” Sure they are. “Well I’ll tell you. My day was so good that I’m going to go slit my wrists in the shower.”

My son’s computer is also equipped with I.M. which means “Instant Message.” As best as I can tell, the guys use the I.M. function to talk behind each others back while they are on the conference call. Occasionally I’ve noticed that my son also speaks into a headset which it turns out is attached to “X-Box Live” where he is monitoring a game of Halo being played by people all over the country on our 50″ high def television. Oh, and also, about every six seconds, there is the sound of breaking glass. That’s his cell phone ringing, so yet another genius can inquire as to what’s ’sup at our house. If you do the math, the kid is now communicating with up to twelve people on four different devices at any given time while I continue to fuck up call-waiting.

Last night I finally got my son to bed and went downstairs to lock up. Everything was quiet. The t.v. was turned off, the dogs were asleep. I turned off the lights and glanced over to his computer. The phone was off the hook and the little red light was glowing. I leaned toward the phone slowly…

“Hello?”
“Hi.”
“Who’s this?”
“This is Eric.”
“Aha. Well, Eric, it’s a school night. Aren’t you supposed to be in bed?”
“Aren’t you supposed to be in the shower slitting your wrists?”

I guess someone was paying attention.

Oh! P.S. If you really listen, it turns out Sebastian’s mom does not have any kind of infection at all. She’s just taking a little break.

Rae

Is it possible to describe the way a person walks down a flight of stairs as “resentful?” Can one characterize the intake of toast as “outraged?”

I guess it’s not just the clean clothing and hot nutritious food that makes him so angry. I think he also has a problem with the way I relentlessly call out the time as the morning goes on.

“Six-thirty five! Twenty-five minutes ’til the bus!”
“Six-fifty! Ten minutes ’til the bus. That’s ten minutes!!”

And he lays there. Fully dressed on the couch under a throw, staring spellbound at recorded episodes of Family Guy that even I can quote verbatim. He has ignored his bagel and licked a piece of cantaloupe.

“Eat!! Eat!! Do you have your shoes on? You hair isn’t combed and you need to pack up your stuff. NI-IIINE MINUTES ‘TIL THE BUS!”

The blessed bus. I love the bus. It’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Instead of driving him all the way to school every morning, I now have time to walk the dogs, take a real shower, occasionally wash my hair. The school sent us a photo of the bus driver. I put her picture up in our kitchen and I thought about her all summer. Her name is Loretta and it’s because of her that I can exercise. I can straighten the house before I leave. I can be an actual adult working woman instead of a sponged-off raving maniac wearing a baseball cap and one earring.

“FOUR MINUTES!” I see some movement under the blanket. I have aggravated the situation to the point where he may even speak. He rises slowly and moves into the bathroom where he brushes his teeth and grows two inches.

“Time’s up!” I call out. And yet, there’s still so much more to do. He needs to find his shoes, do a little dance, pet the dogs, put on a shoe, pet the dogs, put on the other shoe, check out the t.v… oops, his sock is inside out.

Does anyone else remember that commercial where the businessman races into the mini-mart and asks for a fast cup of coffee and they cut to the back of the store where Juan Valdez stands at a coffee bush counting as he picks… “One coffeeeeee beeeeean….. two coffeeeee beeeeans….” That’s what this feels like to me.

Sweat is trickling down the side of my head. I give up the facade of him getting himself ready. I grab a kitchen towel and scrub it over his face. I throw his I.D. and his phone at him, place his backpack in his hands, physically turn him around and shove him out the front door.

He gets on the bus, and I stand at the front door waving. “Goodbye, Loretta… I love you… have a good day…!”

On a normal school day if you were to say, try to  read a book, she would yell upstairs that she “wishes she had time to just read.”   If you were a teenager and asked to go out to a party, she’d mutter,  ”So, your plan is to just leave me here  by myself with all these kids ?”  And when I sold my first T.V. show she wondered if  I’d,  ”finally  be able to get her a job.”

It’s possible I am predisposed to guilt.

The thing is,  I have been through literally decades of therapy.  I recognize guilt.  I  wave at it as it approaches.  Guilt is an old friend I think I’ve outgrown but because we have so much history together, can’t quite bring myself to cut off.  She shows up without any warning (no way Guilt is a guy), embraces me, and to tell the truth,  I hug back.   We feel so comfortable together, that I’m honestly glad to see her.  ”Oh, there you are!” I cry,   “You certainly got here in the nick of time. Listen to this!  I almost went out to dinner with some friends rather than rushing home to be shunned by my son.”

This is a very long way of saying I’m worried that I’m  passing this hard-wired guilt on.

In really ugly ways.

My son asks to have a couple friends sleep-over after I’ve worked until 11:00 the night before and I say, “Oh good.  Let’s make sure you have fun.  Don’t worry about me.  I’ll just serve all of you several meals, clean up and lay in bed at two in the morning praying you’ll all go to bed soon.  I’m pretty sure the six hours of sleep I had last night should be enough to last me for the rest of the weekend.”   Or I will be trying to get out of the house to do something for myself and he will suddenly need to be taken to a school thing or require help on a project.  ”That’s okay, honey,” I say,  ” I didn’t really want a massage.  I don’t actually need new shoes.   It doesn’t matter.  Nothing I want to do ever matters.”

I don’t want to be this person.  This person is my mother.  I-am-not-my-mother.

Yet.

So one night after two (read: four) glasses of wine, I decided to help him through this flaw in my character . I sit him down and tell him all about the way I was brought up.  I explain my mother and what terrible guilt she inflicted on me and how sometimes I can’t help trying to make him feel guilty because it’s so ingrained in my blood.  Then I made the mistake of a lifetime.  I tell him that when I try to give him guilt, he should refuse to accept it.

Wa-aaay too much ammunition.

First of all, and this is key… no more wine before mother-son talks.  Secondly, I have to find a way to take this back because now it appears I have absolutely no leverage.  I used to be able to make him feel really terrible.  I can’t tell you how much I miss that.  Now he looks at me and asks, “Is that guilt?”  ”No!  No,” I cry. “Not guilt!  This is all medically documented.  My back is actually broken from working all day to support this house.  Raising you has literally taken years off my life.”

And now armed with his new information, he laughs at me.

I don’t know.  Maybe it’s a good thing.  Maybe I have kept my son from drowning in my bottomless pit of guilt.  Maybe I have broken the ugly pattern and saved generations of children from misery.

But I have screwed myself royally.  Don’t worry.  That doesn’t matter.  I wanted to be screwed.  Really.

Rae